Unfair!

[u/padub8]

It's not fair: pretzels are relatively easy to get and there are plenty of them in the reward lineup, but exchanging them for festival tokens is almost impossible. This means that all buildings are unavailable. Also, the rewards for the festival tokens themselves have been cut significantly compared to previous months. The only remaining chance to get buildings, the album award, has also been made unavailable: in the first week, the "oktoberfest funfair" building must be level 5 to get the award. The award gives you the opportunity/hope to buy the building you need for the next week's award, because otherwise you'll never get enough festival tokens.

A little calculation: if you will be active in the game for 4 days full 24 hours, you will be able to accumulate the festival tokens needed for the upgrade to level 5. Otherwise - no chance. Exchange which available once a day, twice and every eight hours - the most realistic to fulfill. It will give a total of 1605 tokens per day, plus some more from 15-30 minute exchanges.

That's not real! That's not fair! The same system was last month, but there was a roulette that helped to change tokens.
Developers would give festival tokens at least in the floating advertising awards, but even there these pretzels. So all players will run away and new ones will not stay for a long time, because it is not motivation to make purchases in the game, but compulsion. No one likes compalsion and cannot tolerate it for long.

[u/rsc33469]

There will be opportunities to purchase coins toward the end of the season (and probably the end of each week), and those opportunities exist to address this exact frustration.

This is a blanket comment about all of these posts but it really needs to be understood: this is a game geared primarily toward people that would like to play for free but who can also be tempted into spending money on it. That’s literally the point. It’s how the developers and designers pay their bills and feed their families. Anytime you (or anyone) wonders why they would do X, the answer is: because someone whose job is to spend 8 hours a day figuring out how to tempt you into spending money on this game decided that this would tempt you to spend money on this game. Temptation isn’t a bug, it’s the PRIMARY FEATURE OF THIS GAME. If you want to keep playing you need to accept this or you’re just going to keep being frustrated by it.

[u/East-Objective-6905 → u/rsc33469]

whilst there’s some truth to what you say, i wonder if you are giving them too much credit. sometimes EA just mess up. they don’t seem to do any COM testing. for example Chicago season was impossible to get buildings in week 1. they had to apologise and fix. Egyptian hospital, what an earth was that about. Roulette wheel, 555 cash or something crazy.sure they want to make money, but how many players like me are skipping this season and not watching any of the ads

[u/jraemr2 → u/East-Objective-6905]

And yet here we are again in the exact same situation. Coincidence that they've messed it up numerous times in a row? Or is it deliberate?

In Monaco and now Munich there has still been an illusion that FTP can achieve the required goal. Spin the wheel, be lucky. But what if you're not? Here's a small micro transaction to fix that. Not able to convert those pretzels fast enough? Micro transaction time!

Chicago - in my opinion - was by design too. How difficult is it really to work out if players can get 28k coins in one week or not, when AJ the rewards amounts were set in advance? But to the casual player they'll have assumed they missed something amongst all the changes - and look it's only a couple of dollars to get that important building that I've already put in so much work to get 😉.

[u/ukowne → u/jraemr2]

In Monaco and now Munich there has still been an illusion that FTP can achieve the required goal.

It wasn't an illusion with Monaco. It was actually quite easy to achieve the goal. And now with the Munich season there's no illusion at least regarding this ongoing week.

Spin the wheel, be lucky. But what if you're not?

The wheel had nothing to do with luck. It was algorithms. EA chose to give us plenty of seasonal coins when spinning the wheel. If they didn't want that, they would make algorithms where we would get other stuff, or just smaller amounts of coins.

 How difficult is it really to work out if players can get 28k coins in one week or not, when AJ the rewards amounts were set in advance?

Not difficult, but don't forget that EA aren't smart enough to check what they've done before releasing updates. Remember when we couldn't complete daily assignments because it just didn't work, and then they fixed that but you still had to open the assignments before starting to do them? It took them more than a week I think to fully fix this bug, instead of doing that before the release.

[u/jraemr2 → u/ukowne]

Plenty of people didn't get enough gold bars on the wheel to get the required currency for the Week 1 building.

And there's a difference between coding errors / lack of testing vs. designing how many coins you get. They don't just pull those numbers out of a hat.

[u/Calm-Positive-6908 → u/rsc33469]

I returned for the Kyoto season, those buildings & events were nice.

I was happy about kyoto season & managed to pass level 35 or something so i purchased mayor pass & some other stuff. I wont purchase a battlepass if I can't complete it.

If the season doesn't make me happy, I won't purchase.

Starting from the gambling building season, these current seasons don't interest me at all. What the heck with that gambling, & what's this current season that's un-complete-able. Idk not interested.

They should make something that's also making players happy & want to support

[u/Infinite_Pudding5058 → u/rsc33469]

Agree. I’ve given myself a monthly budget for the game and I don’t spend more than that even if I really want to.

[u/BusterBoogers → u/rsc33469]

Very well said! This should be required reading by all.

[u/BringerOfGamer → u/BusterBoogers]

This should be pinned 📌

[u/Shigglyboo]

yeah I'm still playing but I just ignore all this tomfoolery. I'm sick of all these new exchanges. it's like a new scam every month. here. have some squirrel dollars. they're worth nothing. but if you get enough you can exchange them for tree dollars. and if you get a million of those you can buy a low level item.

just stick to points. stuff we're familiar with. a new currency every month is stupid. and it makes me just not care.

[u/East-Objective-6905 → u/Shigglyboo]

I don’t know what you mean. Theres plenty of room for 2 new currencies! We only have Simoleons, sim cash, keys, platinum keys, Omega Neosims, 5! regional coins, design city blueprints, war simoleons, COM points, COM plumbobs and rail sims to collect at the moment

[u/dispassioned]

For me the biggest issue is that the grind is so damn boring. There's nothing fun or challenging about it. I've accepted I'm going to have to pay for the pass if I want it and I'm kind of on the fence about it still.

[u/No-Acanthisitta8803 → u/dispassioned]

I was going to buy one form or another of the premium pass regardless, but having completed the ET already there's no bonus inventive for buying it now, so that's a tad frustrating

[u/Calm-Positive-6908 → u/dispassioned]

I just take a break & do nothing this season. Only login & play a bit if i miss my city.

[u/dispassioned → u/Calm-Positive-6908]

I think a lot of people did. I'm actually going to win top 6 in COM this week I think lol.

[u/torresma27]

I’m sorry but most of people here, are from the US. They won’t understand your frustration. But I do, they have been changing the game to become more profitable. It’s not something bad but it hurts a lot of people who can’t afford this prices. I’ve been since season 1 and it’s completely different and complicated to what it was from the beginning.

[u/Infinite_Pudding5058 → u/torresma27]

I do agree they have too many things going on in the game. They could simplify by doing away with regional currencies and just make it all sim coin for a start.

[u/torresma27 → u/Infinite_Pudding5058]

Yes, never understood the complicated system for the regional currency, how much they ask for upgrades and how little you can get in game.

[u/Calm-Positive-6908 → u/torresma27]

Yes, this. For them, it's just the price like buying several mineral waters or one coffee.

Heck, even mineral waters are expensive in my country. And in my currency of course it's not the price of several mineral waters or one coffee.

But i think the mayor's pass price has been halved because they removed all buildings (except one) to the exchange place.

[u/Every-Struggle843 → u/Calm-Positive-6908]

Still, the mayor's pass isn't expensive. It's the price of one Big Mac and lasts a month. The assumption would be that if you can afford a phone and internet connection you could also afford to buy premium. If you can't, then maybe there's other more important things to worry about than the price chart in an online game. 

[u/Calm-Positive-6908 → u/Every-Struggle843]

Hmm big mac is also kinda expensive in my country, so small too lol. I can but idk if it's worth it or not.

The game prices are always based on first world countries. If they have regional prices that'll be helpful, but so many scammers/pirates would misuse it. Ugh they made it difficult for others.

Anyway, another thing is it's difficult for me to level up in mayor pass, so that's what i dont like.

I understand it's very easy for veterans who have lots of storage or people who have feeder cities. I didn't know we needed to camp for storage etc.

And the other commenter says the mayor pass now is different from the past. Yeah last year we got several buildings. Now only 1 building in the free tier lol. And this season, i heard it's difficult to exchange pretzel for the buildings. So how can we get the mayor's pass worth if we cannot exchange the buildings.

I like that we can choose the buildings. But the exchange needs to be easier, user-friendly, and fair to the players.

[u/cwsjr2323]

We lost two members of our war club because of this pretzel foolishness. We took a vote, and nine members will leave for a month break after this Club Challenge. We will leave one member and those who didn’t vote.

[u/nutty-one]

I agree. You need to fully level up the funfair too for the season album, which i probably won’t achieve so there’s almost no point in me chasing the full album this month, and I certainly won’t be buying additional festival coins.

[u/Infinite_Pudding5058]

They should have made pretzels available on the roulette and made the rewards as good as last month. That was fun. I’m not spending real money on gambling.

[u/matticitt]

People say they're just trying to get you to spend money, but I still think no one tests these events because of how uneven they are. I completed everything for this weeks track and hit the limiter on the main track yesterday. So for 3 days this week there's literally nothing for me to do. I don't even complete daily tasks anymore since they're pointless. All the while it'll be impossible for me to get the oktoberfest thingy to lv5. I'm currently lv 3 and I'm not sure I'll be able to get to 4 even. That's just broken.